Spring 2023 | The South Asia Art Initiative Scholar in Residence at UC Berkeley
PARTHA MITTER Professor Emeritus, History of Art, University of Sussex
EVENTS
Mon, April 3 at 5 pm: Lecture 1. The Triumph of Modernism: Indian Artists and the Global Avant-garde, 1922-1947
Moderator: Atreyee Gupta, Assistant Professor, Global Modern Art
Richly illustrated talk on the advent of modernism in India, set off by the 1922 exhibition of Bauhaus artists in Calcutta, the first transcultural event in global modernism. Discussion will centre on this period, dominated by the re-interpretation of artistic primitivism as a weapon of anti-colonial resistance, led by three iconic figures: Rabindranath Tagore; Amrita Sher-Gil; Jamini Roy.
Wed, April 5 at 5 pm: Roundtable: The Virtual Cosmopolis
Partha Mitter in conversation with Atreyee Gupta (Department of History of Art), Anneka Lenssen (Department of History of Art), Aglaya Glebova (Department of History of Art), and Harsha Ram (Departments of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Fri, April 7 at 5 pm: Lecture 2. Why Do We Need to Reimagine Modernism? Global Modernism and its Discontents
Moderator: Al-An deSouza, Professor of Photography
Modernism is claimed to be an inclusive global concept today, as demonstrated by the endless merry-go-round of Biennales, Art Fairs and international auctions in which artists from Asia, Africa and Latin America are lionised. The heterogeneous character of contemporary global art practices has even given rise to anxiety about the end of art history as a grand Hegelian narrative. As the talk will argue, rather than being universal, these values are in fact the embedded in western modernism and its special claims to universality. The lecture will offer a critical reappraisal of art history that created the modernist canon and led to its domination of global modernism.
Sat, Apr 8 at 6 pm (By Invitation Only)
SAAI Scholar-in-Residence Reception: The Long Arc of India’s Modernism
A fireside conversation between Partha Mitter, Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex and Atreyee Gupta, Director, South Asia Art Initiative, UC Berkeley
Venue: South Bay
Partha Mitter is a writer and historian of art and culture, specialising in the reception of Indian art in the West, as well as in modernity, art and identity in India, and more recently in global modernism. He studied history at London University and did his doctorate with E. H. Gombrich (1970). He began his career as Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge (1968-69) and Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (1970-74). In 1974 he joined Sussex as a Lecturer in Indian History, retiring in 2002 as Professor in Art History.
His publications include Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977: Chicago University Press, 1992; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2013); Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Indian Art (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002); The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922-1947 (Reaktion Books, London; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007).
Mitter was Radhakrishnan Lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford in 1992 and Getty Visiting Professor at Bogazici University, Istanbul in 2011. He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; and CASVA, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. In 2000 he was invited by the Indian Government to set up the School of Art and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
In 1982 he curated and wrote an introduction to the catalogue of an exhibition on the history of Indian photography for the Photographers Gallery, London. At present he is Emeritus Professor in Art History, University of Sussex, Member of Wolfson College, Oxford and Honorary Fellow, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.